Starting off at AFE

Today was my second day at AFE. What an adventure it's been so far! I'm trying to get more pictures up, but I'm feeling really frustrated with technology at the moment, so you'll have to give me some time. I feel like uploading photos should not be this hard! Oh, well.

I'm teaching kindergarten- did I mention that? Did I also mention that I've never taught kindergarten before in my life? But, they were lacking a steady teacher and I'll be here for two months, and they asked me, so... here I am. Yesterday was nerve-wracking. I had no idea what curriculm they were supposed to be learning, and the kids kept running around and leaving the room without telling me where they were going (which, it turns out, isn't really such a big deal here.) I was trying to be creative and make games out of learning the letters and things, but the only one who really bought into it was Jose (I'll try to get some pics up of him!) Oh, and did I mention that there were only 4 kids? Ha. Luckily, there are only 8 in the class anyway, but still! Wait until they all show up at once. However, this week there is a mission team here from the States, and three of them are teachers at home so they hosted a workshop today for all the teachers of AFE to learn to be more effective in the classroom. It was a huge help for me, and now I have lots of ideas for how to get the kids involved tomorrow. We'll see how that goes!

On a more serious note, we went to the dump yesterday. I had been there before, but you can never really get used to something like that. This time, though, since I kind of knew what to expect and I wasn't put off as much by the wretched smell or the thousands of vultures circling overhead, I decided to try to connect with some people. Some of our team was serving food, and the rest of us handed out water to the people as they stood in line. I shook some hands and asked them their names and how they were doing. But after that I was at a loss for words. It wasn't a barrier of language. It was a barrier of trying to figure out how to relate to someone whose world is light years away from mine. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to wake up everyday, stomach rumbling, put on the same clothes that reak of yesterday's stench, grab your kids, and go and work in the garbage dump from sun up to sun down just so you might find some scraps of food and earn a dollar or two. While I was passing out water a shy girl with a pretty smile caught my eye, so I went to talk to her. She was covered in dirt from head to toe. I found out her name, but I didn't know what to say next. What do you talk about in that situation? I realized that none of the usual topics of small talk that one would use in the States ("Where do you work? what do you do for fun?") etc, apply here. It seems that all we have in common is that we are both human beings, and, maybe, that we both know Jesus. Shouldn't that be enough? I wondered if maybe I had been defining myself by superficial things like where I go to school or what I do in my free time, and not the things that really matter like my relationship with God. On the car ride home with Rey, he reminded me of something else. Though at first it's hard to get to know these people as individuals, they are all real people with real dreams of someday leaving the dump. That is another thing that all people have in common: hope, dreams, and ambition. I have dreams just as they do, though mine are much different. But I can pray that God would put it on my heart to dream not just my own dreams, but to dream along with them that they will leave the dump some day as well.